Imagine something that makes hundreds- no, thousands- of people miserable each year. Something that wastes billions of dollars. Something that decides the future of a child in one day. Sadly, such a thing exists. It is called standardized testing. Not only is it ineffective, it also hurts many different people in many different ways. First of all, it hurts students and parents. It also hurts teachers and even the government. The researchers and data analytists at the SEEALL University have looked at all the files and all the facts, and they have concluded that testing is a hot-and important- topic.
Their findings can change people’s lives. This is important. But, in the end, this analyst thinks that when you look at all of the facts, it is very clear that testing is harmful to students, parents, and society. Testing is harmful to students and parents, as well as society. Parents have to get tutors to teach their students, and that takes time and money. Students get stressed out because so much rides on one test. For example, the SHSAT and the SAT. Those tests decide the next four years of a child’s’ life in one day. But there are other factors.
What if a child goes home to an environment so toxic it could kill? Sadly, this is the case for some children, and the test is their only hope to not end up like their parents. These sad scenarios also work the other way around. Unfortunately, there are some parents out there who have had kids, but they are very poor. Getting into an excellent school and then going on to get a good job after college is the only hope for some parents. And, of course, there is the most common scenario: some kids have test anxiety and they just don’t do well on tests.
Of course, it’s not like the test is any walk in the park for the kids who don’t get nervous. As cnn. com states, “.. we are etting our kids up to fail. The reading passages are three levels above the child’s current grade level,” said a teacher and a mom of two who has opted out her kids for the past two years. “Many teachers have posted that their students were crying because they did not have enough time to finish the test and bubbled in random answers. ” This quote clearly shows that the state test is too hard and there is not enough time administered.
These factors make parents opt their kids out of the test. Unfortunately, this is not the only damage that testing does. Testing also lowers a kid’s self esteem if he gets a bad grade. For example, if a kid gets a bad grade on the test, it will lower his confidence, and it might make him fail other tests in the future. Sadly, not only does testing hurt students and parents, it is also ineffective. There are many reasons why testing is ineffective. One of them is because the test results come back too late for teachers to teach what the students got wrong so the students can learn from their mistakes.
Instead, the results come back in the summer, and by then students are on their way to having new teachers who don’t even know their names, let alone know where they are weak. Of course, the teacher can look at the test results to see that one student is bad at math and another is bad in english. But the truth is, WHERE in math is the student weak? Geometry? Word Problems? Linear equations? That is the second way testing is ineffective: the results could not be more vague! The score that you get is not even your real score!
The test is based on a curve compared to every student in the nation who takes the test. Think of it like this: the test is like a doctor. Your “pain” is an area of math or english that you are weak in. So here is how testing works: you go to the “doctor” and say you ave a “pain. ” Then the doctor says nothing. He gives no helpful information whatsoever. Instead, he gets back to you in several months. Then, even after all that time, he still does not have a solution for your pain. He only tells you how your pain compares with all the kids in the nation.
This is exactly how testing works. You going to the doctor and saying you have a pain is like taking the test. The doctor getting back to you in several months compares to students getting their results back in the summer, when there is nothing their teachers can do. And the the doctor omparing you to all the kids in the nation is exactly what the test does with the bell curve. The score you get is not your real score, which is another way the test is ineffective. If you got a bad score, not only do you not know what you did poorly on, you also don’t know what you really got.
For example, if you got did you really got a 2. 85? Or a 4. 15? As you can see, there are many, many, reasons why testing is ineffective. Besides hurting students and parents and being ineffective, testing also hurts the government and teachers. Not only is testing ineffective, it also hurts students, parents, he government, and teachers. Testing hurts the government because the government spends billions of dollars EACH YEAR printing, writing, and administering the test. The first standardized test was administered in 1878.
Standardized testing costs 1. 7 billion dollars per year. Do the math. If you calculate it correctly, you should get 234. 6. That number represents all the money that the government has spent on standardized testing since the first standardized test was administered in 1878, 138 years ago. It’s pretty clear how this hurts the government- without all this money, the government as less money to spend on things that are actually important- like the army, shelters for the homeless, paying firemen and police officers and social security.
Sadly, this is not even the full extent of the harm that testing inflicts. Other victims of testing are teachers. For example, teachers are heavily based on how their students do on the test. But, again, sadly, the circumstances are not the same for everyone, and the tests do not take this into consideration. However, if some students in a class simply get nervous on tests and as a result they naturally don’t do well, it is not only the student and the parents that uffer, but now it is also the teacher, because the teacher is evaluated on how well the student does on the test.
If enough students do poorly on the test, the teacher might get fired. But here’s the killer: it’s possible that it was not the teacher’s fault. For example, if a student’s parents do not have the money to afford a tutor, then the student has no edge over everyone else in the state, and there is a better chance that the student will get a bad grade. Then not only will the student will suffer, but the teacher of that student will suffer as well. These are all the ays that ineffective testing hurts people of all ages and occupations.
Ultimately, testing is an ineffective system that needs to be abolished immediately. It hurts everyone involved in the process of testing, whether it’s a student, parents, teachers, or even the government, the makers of the test. Not only does testing hurt a lot of people, there is no point to it. It is so vague and ineffective that there is almost no point in administering. And tests like the SHSAT and the SAT make one day the judge of the next four years of a student. All in all, it is very clear that testing is very harmful to students, parents, and society.